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I also grieved, and to a degree that surprised me, because it would be a distortion to claim that my mother and I were particularly close or affectionate. There had been moments, of course. She had always been a great nature-lover, and she’d soften in the country, become hearty and good-humoured, identifying the trees and birds with little trace of her classroom manner, offering me her arm, telling stories. Back at home, though, she was a reserved and rather conservative woman. Observing other mothers at the school gates, I wondered why she wasn’t warmer, brighter, a corrective to my father’s sternness. But then perhaps that was their secret. Perhaps they were a perfect match, like a pair of drumsticks.

Yet there seemed to be no easy correlation between the awful grief I felt at her death and our closeness — or lack of it — in life, and it occurred to me that perhaps grief is as much regret for what we have never had as sorrow for what we have lost. As consolation, I had Connie now, who was a wonder throughout all of this, from that first emergency phone call through the arrangements and preparations, the funeral, the packing away of clothes, trips to the charity shop, the mournful administration of bank accounts and wills, the sale of a house now too big, the purchase of a little flat for Dad. Though Connie and my mother had never got on, had fought openly on more than one occasion, she recognised the irrelevance of this and was present and respectful; affectionate but not cloying or melodramatic or indulgent. A good nurse.

My mother was buried on a December morning, my parents’ house — now my father’s house — cold and dark when we returned and pushed the single beds together once again. Connie took off her funeral dress and we lay beneath the covers holding hands, knowing that there would be three more of these funerals along the way, four if her errant father ever resurfaced, and we would get through them together.

‘I hope you don’t die before me,’ I said, which was mawkish I know, but permissible in those circumstances.

‘I’ll do my best,’ she replied.

Anyway, the weeks passed, the sympathy and condolences were offered and accepted, the salty tingling sensation behind the eyes ceased and over time I lost that special status that the bereaved acquire, was returned to my civilian state and we continued on our way together.

Twenty years later, Connie’s step-father remains in good health, her natural father too for all we know. Shirley, Connie’s mother, shows every sign of being immortal, a living testament to the life-giving properties of tiny hand-rolled cigarettes and rum. Smoked and pickled, it appears she will go on forever and perhaps Connie won’t need me after all.

90. thank you and goodbye

In Munich I got the hotel exactly right for once; a pleasant little family-run place near the Viktualienmarkt, comfortable, unpretentious, quaint but not kitsch. An elderly lady of the type that gets eaten by wolves was there to open the door for us.

‘What about our other guest? Mr Albie …?’

I felt Connie stiffen next to me.

‘Our son. He couldn’t make it, I’m afraid.’ Couldn’t stand it, couldn’t bear it. I’d like to apologise for my son …

‘I am sorry to hear that,’ said the lady, frowning sympatheti-cally. ‘And I am sorry that we cannot refund at such late notice.’

‘Danke schön,’ I said, though I don’t know why. Danke schön and auf Wiedersehen were the only words of German I knew, and so I was doomed to spend our time here thanking then leaving.

Even though official check-in was not for several hours we were shown to our room, which was pleasant in a Brothers Grimm way, over-filled with rustic Bavarian furniture of a kind I hoped Connie would like, old and rather sinister. But she hadn’t slept well on the train and so lay down on the immense bed, curling up her body in that girlish manner that she still has sometimes. ‘Very thin pillows in Germany,’ I observed, but she had closed her eyes so I sat in a rocking chair, poured some water and read up about Bruegel. The rim of the glass smelt rather musty, but apart from that, everything else was tip-top.

91. the land of cockaigne

There are an awful lot of Brueg(h)els, a mystifying array of Jans and Pieters, Elders and Youngers, and matters are not helped by their lack of flair when it came to picking Christian names.